Project 01 / Process Work

On February 20, a couple of my classmates and I went downtown to obtain footage for our type narrative. My concept was based around skyscrapers. I am naturally drawn to them; I think it’s the way that they define a cityscape, along with their massive presence, mixed in with the intricate architecture, that really gets to me. With that, I wanted to kind of address their role in the Toronto skyline, in a stylistic motion graphic.

Here is a video of the footage I collected, and the original arrangement I placed it in for my type narrative.

I tried to create some interest with the way I arranged the footage, since they were pretty basic shots of the buildings.
I played around with multiple screens, and cropping points of interest.

Project 01 / Final

The aim for this video was to integrate type into a moving information graphic, inspired by my gravitation towards tall buildings, and the Toronto skyline.

My main challenges were integrating the type into the composition. In order to stray away from the static lines of type, Ed made a point to make the type fit the theme — make it more architectural . My challenge was to set the type this way, without the motion of the footage interfering with the type or vice versa. I spent a lot of time motion tracking, taking it out, re-doing it, until I found a solution that I thought allowed the type to fit in with the footage.

Ex 3 / The Conversation Final

After reviewing some of my initial concepts, I knew I had to go back to the drawing board for some of the elements. I eliminated the upward type, the street, and tried to animate the words based on what they meant.

I wanted a typeface that was a round, for a bubbly, light-hearted type of feel. It needed to have large circular counters, and yet be highly legible, and Rockwell seemed to do this perfectly.

My favourite parts of the conversation are when characters are speaking simultaneously, I tried to mimic this feeling with overlapping type and playing around with depth of field. I also made it a point to emphasize the sounds of the door opening and closing, using the words said by the character.

Ex 3 / Process Work

Here is one of my initial attempts at animating the conversation.
I tried to include different camera angles, and kept it in mind to to have a cohesive flow.
There were some elements I had to change, such as: type reading upwards, and the literal image of the street.
Because the type isn’t normally read in an upward orientation, I was told to defer from executing my animation in that way.
The image of the street was a little bit redundant, and excessive. I was advised to try to animate the “crossing of the street” with the type itself.

Ex 2 / The X Effect

For this exercise I tried to explore camera angles, 3d objects, and depth of field. I’ve always been interested in typography that could be seen from a variety of angles, so I was determined to learn how to use the camera function. During this process I also learned a little bit about null objects, and parenting the camera with the objects.

Process Work: The X Effect

Ex 1 / Fire

Process

Here are some photos of some angle experiments.

Fire Process

I teamed up Veronica Wong to test out some different Fire Stop-Motion Compositions.
These are some short clips of our photos.

Crazy Ones

One of my favourites. I like the hand-drawn type, and the synchronization with the dialogue. The emotion that exudes from it is extremely inspirational. I like how the text has depth, and the camera angles change, it really gives a unique twist to kinetic type.